


The Weight of Us (Secrets, Mine to Keep)

by KeyDog (BannedBloodOranges)



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternative Universes Issues, Bitterness, Bittersweet, Consequences of a mind meld, Dubious Morality, F/M, Fluff, Hurt and comfort, I don't quite know what this is, Implied Mind Fracture, Implied loss of Sanity, Jealousy, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Multiverse Issues, Nightmares, References to Prime Relationship Uhotty, Time Passing, Weight of Destiny, Writing Exercise, dark!spock prime, references to past relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-09-01 01:37:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20250028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BannedBloodOranges/pseuds/KeyDog
Summary: Jim dreams.





	The Weight of Us (Secrets, Mine to Keep)

**Author's Note:**

> Non-profit fun only.

_Dear fellow traveler_  
_Under the moon_  
_I saw you standing in the shadows and your eyes won't move_  
_You put your hand out_  
_Opened the door_  
_You said come with me boy, I want to show you something more_

_You spoke my language_  
_And touched my limbs_  
_It wasn't difficult_  
_To pull me from myself again_  
_And in our travels_  
_We found our roads_  
_You held it like a mirror, showing me the life I chose_

_And now we turn to my beautiful city_  
_Black skies changed into blue_  
_And my love is so wise and so pretty_  
_But tonight I still dream of you_

_**Dear Fellow Traveller, **_Sea Wolf

* * *

**_The planet was coming apart -_**

_ **Colour, noise, burn.** _

_ I burn, my eyes aflame - _

_ **He does not understand -** _

_You almost -_

** _The rip as a death rings across a bond stretched to its maximum. Rip of sanity, rip of years apart and not, touching and yet not touched -_ **

_Make me believe -_

** _A howl as a room is wrecked apart, chess pieces scattering -_ **

_In miracles, Mr -_

Spock.

Jim Kirk woke, with flush and fever.

He searched for _her_, the range of her limbs, the weight of her arms across his chest and face.

"Jim?" Nyota shifted, shivering awake; he held tighter. Her fingertips grazed his scalp like the breath of butterfly wings, and the dream settled back in his recollection. A twist of anxiety garbled his stomach and he squeezed her until she gasped.

"Jim!" She called, hard in her concern, and she moved, and he followed. The blankets were trussed around them. Jim breathed hard, hard, harder.

"No, please," he begged. "No, no, please."

"Lights, fifty percent," she spoke, clear and cool, the voice that echoed through the comms, the voice he heard from all parts of the ship, the voice that calmed all the noise rushing by in his head. _Uhura_. Their quarters came into view, the muss of her hair billowed around her head in a cloud, the rush of her hands on his face. Her eyes rounded, her lashes fluttering. "Jim..."

He became aware of the pounding in his head, nausea and panic ice in his stomach, heat on his skin, sweat collected in each crease of his body. He pulled away, finally, hugging his stomach and head. Uhura moved closer, slowly, tame.

"I'm here," she said, a pitch in her voice threatening to break. She'd never seen him like this. No-one had seen him like this, and it had to be her, and she'd hate him for this, for these feelings, he just knew, he wasn't fit to Captain a ship, and she'd leave, she'd leave him and -

The dream seized his mind, gaping in him loneliness so complete and awful and claustrophobia inside his flesh, and everything was trapped and _tight tight tight..._

"James." It broke his reverie. She closed her arms around his shoulders, loose and careful, and with her breasts to his back, he felt all of her, alive and real and grounding. "Breathe, James. Come on, breathe deep."

She rocked him, and he cried, nose dripping, mouth open, turning desperately into her. HIs fever rocketed, and all around him was hot and fixed, except her, a balm for all the pain in his head.

"Nyota..." he rose, shakily; she supported him. "I'm going to be sick."

How the night had taken such an ugly turn from the bright day he didn't know. They'd played chess, had dinner, debated the meanings of different languages. He'd made her laugh as they'd puzzled Cluedo together over the mash of sheets they'd rumpled during sex, planned the shore leave where he'd finally meet her parents. When he'd gone to sleep, he'd been Captain of the Enterprise, best friends to his First Officer and Head CMO, youngest in the fleet and best of all, spending the evening with Nyota.

With his head in the bowl, he heard the beep of the comm and a murmur, and then the soft pad of her feet on the tiles, and her hand settled on the back of his neck.

* * *

After Nero, the dreams visited like coastal tides, reigning in new stories with the weight of their mental crashes. At times, they were soft with reverence, scents of toasting campfires and ash of mountain rock. Other times they roiled his senses with the gash of blood on ripped uniform, stickiness between his legs, gagging as rough linen closed around his throat and yanked.

As the years went on, they began to accelerate, as if something within their fabric was beginning to panic, to pulse and pull. At the eve of the five-year mission, he woke up with words in his mouth that weren't his, with breath misted on separating glass, his own death but different. The loneliness gaped, sang out its misery, and he would hear all the echoes, layered on top of one another, a siren song.

_Find me._

* * *

Bones's swearing carried down the hall, complemented by Spock's low, calculating burr and the sound hackled all the hair on Jim's neck. He went to rise, but Nyota caught his shoulder and (gently) forced him down.

"You shouldn't have got Bones," he said, but he took her hand all the same. "I'm alright."

"You're burning up like a solar fire," She quipped, a hint of her old irony, but her eyes were crinkled with concern. "You're not yourself, Jim."

The doors whooshed open and in waltzed Bones in his boxers and t-shirt, grumbling apologies to Nyota, and made a bid for Jim with all the intensity of a laser. He was shadowed by Spock in Standard Issue nightwear, his bangs flicked up at the front, the buttons on his shirt hazardously done up. It wasn't just their sleep he'd interrupted. All the prospective humour of the situation died as his two friends took one look at him, and Bones closed his mouth like a clam, flat and worried.

He sat at the end of the bed as McCoy scanned him, legs dangling like a kid. Spock was at the door with Uhura next to him, one of Jim's old t-shirts stretched over her knees, their heads together in a pang of their old intimacy. Their dark eyes, glossed with concern, were like a pair of watching owls, the sort he would have a staring contest with back in Iowa in a farmhouse attic as crockery broke below.

Bones checked his pulse, felt along his neck and glands with his palms. He was all too happy to cast off the techno whizz for a good old fashioned hands-on, but any innuendo Jim could cheerfully sprout died as he closed his eyes and hung his head, too ill to even talk.

The overhead light was too bright, skinning him alive as he sat in the thrall of it. He felt naked, unsafe, and the spear of Spock's voice (asking after his health) only made him uneasy. It wasn't deep enough, gravelly enough, hungry enough to bring the dream back to life, but it was close enough to kick his gut, make him twist and shiver.

"Hold still, Jim!" Bones cut across him, sharp. When he got no reply, he turned to Nyota. "Panic attack, I take it?"

Nyota left Spock's side, hovering close. She knew him so well; his body, his tongue, his head. Nyota had him decoded and he clung to that. He trusted her above everyone else, a strange fate for the beautiful girl he'd leered at those years ago, and in front of his friends, uncaring, he pushed his sweaty head into her stomach and whined between his teeth. He didn't care if they saw him like this. They were his family, or so he told himself, but they were still all so young, so early in everything, and a voice whispered _there is still time -_

_Time for what?_

"I'm gonna give you a sedative, Jim." Bones unclasped his case. Spock came and stood above him, arms clasped behind his back. Jim made a mental note to tell Bones to convince his First Officer to invest in some proper pyjamas, or just wear boxers like any other functioning adult. "An anti-inflammatory, pain killer, anti-nausea cocktail. You'll pass out but when you wake you'll feel like a million dollars." He turned to Spock and muttered; "If I were you, Spock, I suggest you take the next shift. Uhura, if you can stay with him..."

"No." Jim sat bolt upright, waving away Bones's trembling hypo. Give him any occasion, and he uses his neck like a pin cushion. "Just let me sleep. I'll be fine by morning, okay? And I don't want my Officers having to babysit..."

"Jim, I must protest..."

Typical Spock.

"For God's sake, James!" Less than typical Uhura. "When you woke, you were..."

Jim glanced at her quickly.

Her pupils flickered over his face, at the tightness of his lips. She exhaled and bobbed her head, a tiny movement.

"The sedative is enough, Bones," Jim turned slowly back to McCoy, who applied it in a flourish. Spock was staring at him, curiously, and then at Nyota, who turned down her eyes at his silent question. "I need my crew, my ship, and they need me."

Unable to help herself, she leant over and pressed her lips to his forehead. With sleep now a heavy comfort, his hands found her waist, his thumbs interlocked against the muscular bruise of her ribs.

* * *

In what seemed like a lifetime ago, Spock had spoken of the earth as his last home, and his gaze had suspended, momentarily, on Nyota, and Jim had such a gut wrench of jealousy at the memory he was surprised he didn't implode there and then, didn't do something stupid like start a bar fight or mention Spock's mother or be halfway erotically choked on the comm system. But destiny was downright weird, for Spock had found his way to Bones in their strange, sparring way and Jim let them, as the spaces between him and Nyota grew closer, closer.

But Jim could understand Spock's initial sentiment more than ever, for he had never belonged anywhere, now not even in the realms of his head, but Nyota was _home_ to him. He wondered if he'd felt that pullback in the drunken mess that was the bar, when she had seen him and not seen at the same time, why even in the academy he had pursued her so desperately, hiding his elevated heartbeats behind childish pigtail pulling. Even Bones had told him to cut it out, that she would eat him for breakfast given half a chance, that she was too splendid and shining and steady in herself to be attracted to a messy farmboy with too much tongue in his mouth.

_Talented tongue, talented tongue._

He'd thrashed awake, tongue flailing in languages he didn't understand, and he'd seen her, crouched at the end of the bed, her black irises huge in the white of her eyes and when he'd asked later what he had said, she had given no reply.

* * *

A chill existed on the back of his neck whenever Scotty was on the bridge, passing the back of Nyota's chair, and the feeling was stupid and _selfish_ and yet it was sunk so deep in his head, a carousel of paranoia.

What made it worse was that Nyota was unapologetically, affectionately, absolutely Scotty's friend. Some pulls from alternative galaxies could not be denied, and they went well together for Scotty was a good-natured genius and the only one happy to receive anyone at any given time, and he'd brought her a vintage karaoke machine rewired with Romulan love songs for her birthday, and Jim had clacked his teeth shut and smiled poisonously through it all.

(She'd sung to him that night, both romantic and filthy, and he'd been useless, hers from the first note.)

Jim could see the seedlings of feelings between them, the first warm wash of frank compatibility, and it was so impossible to control that it terrified him.

He wondered if McCoy looked at him the same way.

* * *

Three years into the five-year mission, he woke with his heart bleeding out of his eyes and Nyota asleep, her legs tangled in his, their fingers interlaced. He'd given up on his tears, given up on sharing them. Nyota knew and that was enough. He didn't want their long hours soiled by sorrow and the tantrum of dreams that refused to die.

It was a terrible love. A consuming maelstrom of passions, biblical even, and Jim believed he did not have the capacity for it, could not even hold it in his head.

He feared if he loved Nyota like that. If anyone sane could love like that. Would he tear apart galaxies to get back to her? Resign every ambition, risk the lives of his crew, even his own blood, for the sake of a single chance at a _second_ chance?

"I wouldn't ask that of you," she murmured. She'd heard him stir. She was awake most nights with him now, when the dreams arrived, thickening as the years began to creep fast. They'd moved from early, sick heart love to domesticity, ease of routine, where she'd sit on the toilet as he took a shower, where he could order her dinner without asking, where they could sit in comfortable silence buried in antique paperbacks. Jim wondered numbly if they would eventually have children. "I'm too sensible."

"I think we're lucky," Jim replied, sitting up. "We didn't have years of repression."

"Is that what it was?"

"I don't think I'm sane."

She sat up then, brushing the covers off her bare legs. They'd had sex the night before, satisfying and comfortable, knowing the ins and ends of each other like a second language. Or a 22nd language, if you count Nyota. 

He'd meant the comment as a joke, but it came out flat, rolling away from him. 

"You were always a little crazy," She offered, lightly. "You tried to chat me up once, didn't you?"

He broke into a grin. It hurt his cheeks, but the effort was there.

"God, you came in like a parting of the ways," he chuckled, shaking his head. "Everyone stood back like Moses and I knew I wouldn't be the same."

"You were drunk and horny, cut the crap."

"Not going to let me be poetic, Ny?"

"Never." She got on her knees, tangling her arms around his shoulders. Her topknot had unravelled around her shoulders, and he turned to kiss it, to kiss her. She opened her mouth, moved her tongue slow against his, and he thought _yes, I would._

As if sensing it, she pulled back.

"I would, you know." He whispered. Her lips twitched into a smile, but there was conflict in the creases beneath her eyes. "I would take everything apart, put it all back together again, to find you finding me, drunk and horny and over my head in a backwater bar."

"Jim..."

"It scares me, Ny." His voice cracked. "It scares me, what these dreams do. What they show me capable of."

"Not you." She declared, stony. "Him."

"Am I not him?"

"No." She shook him with her finality. "You are James Kirk, of the here and now, and I am Nyota Uhura of the here and now, and I love you, and I know you love me, and that is all that matters."

"Ny..."

"I hate him." She spoke with a bitterness he didn't think her capable of. "For what he did to you."

_To us _rang clear and true.

"I don't think he meant to..."

"Don't defend him." 

For all of Nyota's claims that they were their own persons, it was impossible for the shadow of foul feeling to not pass through. It was an elder Spock that had reached into Jim's mind, had rearranged his neurons and synapses like building blocks for a life that would not and could not happen. It was _a_ Spock that served beside them on the bridge, close personal friend and more or less Jim's unofficial brother in law, but it was a Spock, and Nyota, hemmed in by duty and her own compassion, could not attack an elderly ambassador with failing mental facilities. But her gaze had become acrylic as she looked upon the first Officer, a flinch in her shoulder whenever he passed.

Rust had developed over the affection she once held, had become brittle and stretched, like butter spread too far and thin.

Jim blamed himself.

"Ny." He kissed her shoulders, her face, nuzzling the dark arch of her shoulder, feeling the push up of the tendons pulsed over muscles, blood, bones. All the strings, tightly wired, to keep her together, a bodily machine built to encase her magnificent brain. "I would do it, you know."

"Jim..." Her throat hummed with the words. "Please don't say that."

"I would..." He laid her back on the bed. He wondered what she saw in his eyes. The terrible love leaked through his teeth, animated his tongue. "...for you, anything."

* * *

On the eve of their second five-year mission, they received a formal request.

New Vulcan was red dust, red sky, the skyline blazing alive. Nyota wore her dress uniform as a sign of respect, her black hair bound neatly in a low bun. On the path to the temple, she'd held his hand. Spock and McCoy were a shadow behind them, McCoy struggling with the heat, Spock straight and tall and crossing the desert in long strides.

They'd aged, all of them. Jim knew, from his dreams, that he'd slowly began to inhabit the body of his counterpart. His hair had become tawny, his face had softened, his temper had calmed behind the weight of command, the responsibility for caring for hundreds of life above his own. But his eyes (blue, _his_ eyes) were the same.

The interior of the temple was cool and vast and awaiting them was the Doctor, stood sombrely outside a pair of heavy oak doors, flanked by burning incense and Vulcans dressed in licks of black and grey.

Nyota's hand caught Jim's shoulder. The firelight caught the ring on her finger, earth diamond and Romulan platinum.

"You don't have to do this," she murmured. Her eyes were hard. "After everything. You don't."

"I know." He kissed her forehead. None of the watching audience twitched an eye. "But I owe it to him. To Spock."

"Spock," she said. The word had lilted once with affection, now it died flat and sad on her lips. She smiled stiffly and put her lips to his cheek. "I understand."

"Ambassador Selek has requested the presence of Commander Spock, firstly," The Doctor droned, her arachnid fingers linked together under her chin.

McCoy turned sharply to Spock, who stilled him with a secondary glance, but their arms brushed oh so gently as he passed.

The great doors closed behind him and Jim's heart jolted.

* * *

They'd waited out the hours patiently. McCoy had taken out a small chess travel set and challenged Jim to a game. Nyota crossed her legs on the long stone benches, her thumb and forefinger fiddling with her ring as she gently answered the tentative questions of a curious Vulcan child, and in between, offered advice to McCoy about his next move.

"Captain Kirk." Jim rose upon command. He hadn't seen Spock leave. McCoy's brow darkened and he glanced at Nyota, who motioned at him to be quiet. "You are permitted to enter."

Jim shot his friends a tired smile and followed the high backed Doctor.

The phantom sensation of Nyota's hand agonised his palm.

* * *

Selek's room heaved with incense, trimmed with red lights, all the colours of fire. The great bed splayed from the corners of the room, curtains as thin and light as cobwebs billowing about the body lain out spindle thin.

Jim moved to the centre of the room.

Encased in the bed was Selek. The dredge of his lives hung on his body, shallowness and fragility in his bones and Vulcan blood, but his eyes were as bright as ever, and upon seeing Jim, took on a fervour.

"James T. Kirk," he rasped. Jim sat beside the bed. "My old friend."

"Ambassador," Jim clasped his hands together. He did not permit to touch the old man, even as Selek half-consciously extended his hands to him. He seemed so harmless, so small. "Are you comfortable?"

"As comfortable as I could ever be, Jim," He used his first name so warmly, so easily. Jim's neck was hot. He adjusted his collar, coughing. "To see you, one final time. It is a blessing."

"It is good to see you," Jim tried to smile in a way that looked comforting. "Old friend."

The figure straightened up, the soft aged hands moving as if on habit, to pull down his shirt. A recycled memory creaked in Jim's head and he moaned at it, pressing his fingers to his temple.

"I believe we shall not mince words," Selek uttered, with familiar and not so familiar professionalism. It was, like everything, a misplaced deja vu. "You are troubled."

"Yeah. I am." Jim rubbed his hands together, and added; "You're dying, and I don't want that."

"Unfortunate. But it must be. I am very old, Jim. I have lived more lives then I could ever have imagined."

"True," Jim glanced up at him. "And you've placed those same lives in my head."

A silence. Selek leant back, pressed his forefingers to his mouth, as if in meditation.

Jim waited, respectful to the last.

Selek smiled.

Jim hadn't been expecting that.

"Ah." He nodded his head. "So it was successful. Fascinating."

Jim dropped his diplomacy like a bomb.

_"What?"_

_"_It wasn't quite what I expected." Selek continued as if deducting a slightly taxing Maths problem. "But over these last few years, it has grown in its tenacity. I have been waiting for you to speak of it, for I had sensed it, and now I see, so have you."

"The dreams are harrowing," Jim spoke slowly, fighting shock so strong he couldn't find it in himself to be angry. Selek could not hurt him, would not hurt him, not on _purpose_. "I need them gone. They've interfered with my sense of self. I've even had to get McCoy involved. I thought you could..." He swallowed at the glint in Selek's eye. "...help me."

A silence settled.

"No," Selek said, thoughtful.

Jim's head snapped up.

"What?"

"I do not think I wish to, Jim." The elderly Vulcan observed him intently, with a crinkled smile. It was affectionate and slight and the most powerful thing in the room.

"But..." Jim touched his face, the point beneath his eye, his temple. "It's there. All the time. Waking me up, driving me to distraction. It's eating me alive, Spock."

The use of his real name was a mistake. Spock relaxed into his sheets, visibly delighted at the admission, and smiled further.

"That I do not doubt," he said, lightly.

"But why?"

"I think for someone to know what it was I had," Spock responded. He stretched out his quivering hand and cradled Jim's face. "To have evidence of that bond, unbroken by time, by circumstance, by death itself."

"That's all very romantic," Jim broke in. The years of command fell from his voice; he felt like that misguided boy, waking up in a freezing cavern with a stranger with a familiar name, who looked at him as if the world had righted itself. "But that's not my life. That's not me. I'm not him, you know that..."

"You are familiar enough."

"Please." Jim shook his head. "Please, I don't want to live with this." Against his judgement, he rolled his cheek into Spock's palm, so alien yet so familiar, prints and mannerisms massaged onto his brain by dreams. It was if Spock had peeled back his skin, reached inward and caressed his bones and blood. He felt so vulnerable, so changeable, so completely at odds with himself.

"You will have to," came the ineffable reply, and the thumbs rubbed the tears on his cheeks, as Jim got on his knees, his head buried in Spock's lap, the dormant memories filling, filling, filling him -

_"Yes." _The whisper left the old man's mouth, the same growling purr unfolding in his sleep.

Fingers turned up his face, attaching to the meld points, and everything burst afresh in Jim, a complete freefall, an endless lurch of longing so hungry, so gut-deep, he could die. Emotions were strung like raw nerves, playing and plucked at until all Jim could do was cry, and laugh, and die all over again. Planets and stars rode past his eyes in bursts of colours like escaping balloons, as thick forests grew and died around him, as radiation burned him through and he was awake in the firelight, with a face like his but not his, no no no -

_Jim._

The euphoria.

_Your name is Jim._

Jim spun through it all, his mind and bodies like a printing press, joy and hate and love and _burning I am burning Jim..._

It was not loving, it was agony. An obsession so consuming that Jim lived it again and again, and he could only hold the husk of the man who did all this to him - why, _why_ \- and clutch at his waist, as Selek (Spock) took and took and took.

Hands were on him. He did not know what it was, what was happening, for everything was so alive and rich and oh god, so intense -

"Jim!" Nyota. He was on his back, on the floor. McCoy was swarming Selek, bashing past healers, gripping the back of Spock's collar and fighting him back._ Nyota._

He stared dumbly at her. His mind buzzed, blew.

Numb.

Completely _numb._

She pulled him on her lap, stroking down his face with her thumbs. She smelt of apricots, of soap and the pang of sweat. Her hair brushed his eyelids and he woke in a snap.

"Nyota..." He croaked. The world came seething back in a rush and he cried out; "Nyota!"

He did not know how they got him outside. Spock was hissing in Vulcan, pacing around the bed like a wild thing and McCoy was a struggling aide to his side, but Jim could not think, could not even care. He could barely stand. His mind screamed and stewed and he thrashed in Nyota's arms, trying desperately to bring her closer, to block out all others, gasping gibberish.

The Vulcan healer closed her hand over his face and everything went black.

* * *

The room was bare stone, blue lights, colours of ice.

He was lain in a single bed, stripped to his underwear. The day had burned out, been replaced by night with a bitter wind.

He heard the rustle of Nyota's clothing as it dropped to her ankles, the unzipping of her skirt, the soft _clink_ of her earrings on the bedside table.

She got into bed with him, bare skin on bare skin, sliding her legs up against his thighs, caressing down his hair and chin with her hands.

"Ny." He whispered. The numbness enacted by the healer made his speech slow, laboured. "What happened?"

"Sleep now." She blew against his ear. "It's over. Sleep now."

"Please, Ny."

She drew a trembling breath.

"The Ambassador is dead. He passed peacefully in his sleep."

He managed to turn his head, to look at her. Her eyes were huge, luminous, steeled.

"He granted me anything but peace," Jim said. The noise was there, scraping around the edges of his brain, an insistent echo that refused to die. But as of now, he could think plainly. As of now, the way was clear, and the answer was clear, and it wasn't what they wanted.

"I'm sorry, Jim." The bed creaked as she adjusted herself. The rush of her body tingled him, but the paralysis kept him lethargic, heavy. "I'm so sorry. Will you be alright?"

The unanswered question hung in the air. It would hang between them for years to come.

_Will we be alright?_

"I'll live." He replied. He turned his head to the window, where the sky was stung with stars. He took a deep breath, anchored himself in his mind with the force of her hand in his, and prepared to dream. "I'll live."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [passed out (in a dream)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21314995) by [KeyDog (BannedBloodOranges)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BannedBloodOranges/pseuds/KeyDog)


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